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Panicky Robots vs. the FOMC

Trading Robots live and walk among us, and I have proof! It’s a conspiracy.

Today the FOMC (aka ‘The Fed’) stated “Several participants judged that the economic data and outlook were likely to warrant beginning normalization at the June meeting.” I.e. some of them wanted to raise interest rates. But that the overall consensus was to wait until later in the year or beyond to start raising rates.

Meanwhile, in an underground lair deep below Manhattan, a robot spotted the terms “FOMC” and “June rate hike” in a news feed, and red lights immediately started flashing. “SELL SELL SELL” flashed the words across the glowing CRT screen. The overhead lights switched to red warning lights, and the alarms rang out.

A lone human minder was startled out of his slumber, and leaped into action. After quickly reading the FOMC minutes he shouted “Aw, crap! It’s happened again! Stupid robots and their inability to gauge context!”

He hits the giant UNDO button and the SELL SELL SELL orders change to BUY BUY BUY orders. Within minutes, the spike downward is reversed, almost like it never happened. Then the human minder goes back to sleep, his job done until perhaps Elon Musk cracks another ill-timed joke about Tesla on Twitter.

And maybe by tomorrow if you search for it, you won’t find any evidence of the error. Because of course the robots will fix that. But you and I know. We saw it happen. And with my tinfoil helmet, I’ll keep the robots from erasing my memory of the event…